Don’t Trust Friends Who “Know About WordPress”

It has now happened for the fourth time. I received an email from a client for whom I set up a WordPress site. Instead of contracting with me to move their site, they went with their friend/teenager/employee/volunteer who “knew about WordPress”. They moved the site to a new host, cancelled the old host, but the new site doesn’t work.

Why? Because WordPress works with a database and the person who “knew about WordPress” didn’t transfer the database, just the files.

Three years of content lost.

Except….

Huzzah for backups!

I’d set up backups to be saved to the site AND emailed to the client. The client had been deleting the backups in her email, but the latest backup was transferred to their new hosting along with the rest of the files. I quoted rush pricing to get their site up and running again, which they declined. Their person who “knew about WordPress” could get it installed.

I received another email. The person who “knew about WordPress” couldn’t figure out “where the database is”.

As I half expected, I ended up restoring the site per my rush quote. If they’d come to me to begin with it would have cost 1/3 the price and their site would not have been down for a week.

For more than 10 years I've been making websites work for clients world-wide using WordPress, Google Maps, forms and custom applications. You can see my work portfolio and case studies at Beyond Paper.